Those of you who have chosen to sit down and
compose or put-together an item that will be sent by means of the snail
mail services understand the various steps that are part of that
particular process. No one would carry-out the letter-writing procedure
without having a good reason for doing so. Unfortunately, the sender
of an e-mail has been known to give much less thought to the purpose
behind that same piece of communication.
That simple fact manages to
highlight one of the chief reasons that so many present-day businesses
are trying to discover how to make an e-mail more effective. Phillip
Thow has said that the trick to increasing an e-mail’s effectiveness is
really quite simple. Any message that is going to be directed to the
inbox of another Internet user ought to have a definite purpose.
Consequently, the tailoring of
e-mails belongs on a list of the four characteristics of a good e-mail
campaign. After all, who would put a letter in a pink envelope, when
that particular message is going to be sent to a highly-respected
gentleman? That observation makes it obvious that an e-mail’s heading
should be one that has been tailored; it should be designed to catch
the attention of the person who will receive it.
Still, Phillip Thow has cautioned
that it is not enough to create an e-mail that seems perfectly tailored
for its intended purpose. Once it has been created, that same piece of
communication has to be tested. Indeed, the testing of e-mails joins
their tailoring as a step that needs to be carried-out by the planner of
a campaign that relies heavily on those same pieces of communication.
Naturally, such testing must follow
the process used for all A/B testing. A message with a given heading
should be sent to a known Internet user. Later, that same message can
be delivered by using a different heading. Then the sender must see
which of those two emails has been opened by the recipient.
Note that the above example
calls-for the altering of one single parameter, in this case the words
in the heading. A test will not give definitive results, if two or more
factors have been altered at that same time. By the same token, a
single test will not yield results that are as meaningful as those
obtained from performance of dual testing.
Yet a tailored and well-tested
message will lack a purpose, if the timing of its release can be
questioned. In other words, it makes no sense to be e-mailing a message
about an upcoming event, if that particular communication may not get
opened until after the mentioned event has finished. Not every Internet
user sits in front of a lighted screen, awaiting the arrival of
somebody’s message. That fact underscores the reason that care must be
given to the timing for the release of any group of e-mails.
Still, tailoring, testing and timing
do not make for a complete list of what must be part of an effective
e-mail campaign. That three-word list leaves-out one noteworthy
characteristic, one that Phillip Thow encourages every site-owner to
keep in mind. That particular characteristic is one that is called
tracking. In other words, tracking should be part of any campaign that
relies on e-mails.
The e-mail’s sender ought to note when any given
communication was sent out. Then the same person should be charged with
noting if and when the sender gets a response to whatever item has been
sent by means of the Internet. The observation of such responses (or
evidence of a corresponding lack of the same) must be viewed as a sure
sign that a group of e-mails has been tracked. When tracking has been
combined with tailoring, testing and timing, then a campaign can be
categorized as one that should prove effective.
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